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Agreed, although maybe this is what they want to happen. If you use their bandwidth and they don't make any money off your visit, then they probably don't care

Agreed, although maybe this is what they want to happen. If you use their bandwidth and they don't make any money off your visit, then they probably don't care if you never come back. I'm like you though; I actively avoid reading sites that do this. I also block JavaScript by default, which helps to mitigate a lot of other annoyances and privacy invasions.

flukus 10y ago
The don't realize the relationship is symbiotic though. Part of the value of big news sites like forbes is their influence. To an extent they are widely read because they are widely read, people read it to see what others are reading.
- dismantlethesun 10y ago
  Perhaps, but as an alternative perspective.... I work for a midlevel publisher. Nearly of our content is syndicated, with very nearly none if it being unique. Our value -add is our selectivity, and great on-site user experience when it comes to filtering and subscriptions. 20% of our readers use adblock. For video content which is a mere fraction of our site, that comes out to $700 a day in bandwidth costs going to adblock users, or $21,000 in the average month. That's a lot. What publisher wouldn't fall over themselves to get 20% more profits in a given year? In the last year, we grew approximately 20% but our % of adblock users soared so while costs are up, revenue is flat. This isn't a sustainable situation. I have a lot of sympathy for people who do not want to see intrsuive advertisement, and I myself feel the same way sometimes, but when it comes down to sheer costs---we can't afford to subsidize adblock users. I'm unconviced that adblock users add more value that they take away. Since we know how many of them they are, and how much they cost, we can ask is $21,000 better spent subsizing adblock user who may tell their friends about our site, or is it better spent on traditional advertising? I think that people do follow word-of-mouth better than traditional ads, but that also means the friends of adblock users are more likely to be adblock users themselves---thus just an additional cost ontop of one we can't handle already.
  - flukus 10y ago
    Is that video content that users want or stuff that you auto play for them?
    - dismantlethesun 10y ago
      We don't autoplay videos because that costs bandwidth. These aren't ads. They have to click play for anything to happen.

flukus 10y ago

The don't realize the relationship is symbiotic though. Part of the value of big news sites like forbes is their influence. To an extent they are widely read because they are widely read, people read it to see what others are reading.

dismantlethesun 10y ago
Perhaps, but as an alternative perspective.... I work for a midlevel publisher. Nearly of our content is syndicated, with very nearly none if it being unique. Our value -add is our selectivity, and great on-site user experience when it comes to filtering and subscriptions. 20% of our readers use adblock. For video content which is a mere fraction of our site, that comes out to $700 a day in bandwidth costs going to adblock users, or $21,000 in the average month. That's a lot. What publisher wouldn't fall over themselves to get 20% more profits in a given year? In the last year, we grew approximately 20% but our % of adblock users soared so while costs are up, revenue is flat. This isn't a sustainable situation. I have a lot of sympathy for people who do not want to see intrsuive advertisement, and I myself feel the same way sometimes, but when it comes down to sheer costs---we can't afford to subsidize adblock users. I'm unconviced that adblock users add more value that they take away. Since we know how many of them they are, and how much they cost, we can ask is $21,000 better spent subsizing adblock user who may tell their friends about our site, or is it better spent on traditional advertising? I think that people do follow word-of-mouth better than traditional ads, but that also means the friends of adblock users are more likely to be adblock users themselves---thus just an additional cost ontop of one we can't handle already.
- flukus 10y ago
  Is that video content that users want or stuff that you auto play for them?
  - dismantlethesun 10y ago
    We don't autoplay videos because that costs bandwidth. These aren't ads. They have to click play for anything to happen.